East Jackson Middle School staff, students say goodbye on school's last day

CITIZEN PATRIOT â¢ NICK DENTAMAROStudents wave to teachers as busses pull away from East Jackson Middle School for the final time.

Staci Adkins first encountered Cory Hunt while they were attending East Jackson Middle School in the late 1970s.

The future Staci Hunt doesn’t really remember the boy who would eventually become her co-worker at the same school and then her husband.

On Tuesday, the Hunts were among employees and students who said farewell to the big brick building at 4340 Walz Road on the last day of the school year.

The 37-year-old school is closing due to budget cuts. Next fall, the district’s middle school students will go to East Jackson High School or Robinson Elementary School.

“One of these desks was mine,” Staci Hunt said Tuesday afternoon of the student desks in the science and art teacher’s classroom. “I’m sure. I told the kids to take good care, because I sat in one of them.”

The last days of East Jackson Middle School

About East Jackson Middle School

First the new East Jackson Middle School almost didn’t open at all. Then it was nearly built at a different location than its location on Walz Road near Brills Lake.

It took voter approval of a $3.65 million bond issue for East Jackson to construct a new building to replace its 1917 middle school at E. Michigan Avenue and Dettman Road. Voters approved the bond on March 8, 1971, by a narrow 448 to 442 margin.

The school board initially selected 40 acres off Ann Arbor Road northwest of Gilletts Lake as the site of the new school. But tests determined that the property, which had been used as a summer camp for the Southern Conference of the Free Methodist Church of North America, had soil that couldn’t support the weight of a school.

So the district bought the land on Walz Road near Brills Lake, paying $1,000 an acre for 30 acres. The new school opened its doors on Sept. 4, 1973.

— Source: Jackson Citizen Patriot archives

There were no tears apparent after the bell rang at the school for what might be the last time.

“It’s sad, but it’s what’s best for the district right now and best for the students,” Hunt said just before the end of the school day. “The memories that have been made here are from all the people who have come and gone and walked the halls.”

Hunt, 41, grew up in Leoni Township and began attending East Jackson Middle School in 1978. She returned as an employee and taught at the school for 18 years.

Hunt, who taught sixth-graders this year, will teach seventh grade next year at the high school.

Her husband, Cory, 41, completed his 16th year at the school, teaching political science. Next year, he will teach science at the high school.

District officials have said closing the school will save nearly $800,000 next school year. Under reconfiguration, Memorial Elementary School will become a K-3 school, Robinson will be grades 4-6 and the high school will be grades 7-12.

East Jackson Superintendent Paul Reeves said the district will use the building’s gymnasiums for practices and games next school year and could reopen the school if the state’s economy improves. Officials are looking for a tenant, such as a college, to rent classroom space there, he said.

School officials have said older and younger students at the high school will be separated most of the time, but some students said Tuesday they are nervous.

“I’m kind of sad,” Heavan Tedder, 12, a sixth-grader, said. “I like the way it’s set up,” she said of the middle school. “All of our classes are in, like, one hallway.

“I’m kind of scared to go to the high school because I don’t want to be with a lot of high schoolers.”

As is the tradition on the last day of school, the East Jackson Middle School staff stood in front of the school and waved to departing students riding the buses as they did laps around the drive.

Then some of the employees turned toward the school and waved goodbye to it.